Dragons off camera: Business insights, sprinkled with some gentleman’s sparring

You may enjoy watching CBC’s dragons in their TV den, but they’re even more fun in real life. Two Dragons’ Den stars and one much-missed former dragon butted heads in a live panel last week at the Gentlemen’s Expo in Toronto, offering pointed business advice that was just as gripping as their quips and insults.

Before we get to those insights, a few choice dragon digs to brighten your morning.

— Early in the conversation, Jim Treliving of Boston Pizza mentioned that the male-female ratio of the entrepreneurs he’d invested in was 70% : 40%. When Lava Life co-founder Bruce Croxon called him on it, Treliving shot back: “I never was good with numbers. I just have a lot of them.”

— When asked if he was going to write a book, as the other dragons have, Croxon said it didn’t interest him. Said Treliving, who is 72, “You’re too young to write a goddamn book. Wait till you get some experience.”

— When Treliving referred back to his school days, former dragon Brett Wilson, a 56-year-old oil and gas investor turned philanthropist, couldn’t help retorting: “Were there schools when you were in school?”

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The first question posed to the panel was a toughie: How do women entrepreneurs compare to men?

Wilson jumped into the fray, noting that of his 30 deals on Dragons’ Den, 10 are now dead, 10 dying, and 10 going strong. Of the latter 10, he said seven are run by women: “They are organized, they are focused, they are driven, and they care.”

Croxon said conventional wisdom often assumes men have more experience and make better entrepreneurs, but he noted that Balzac Coffee, run by a woman, is one of his best investments. As an investor, he said, “I don’t see gender as a criteria at all.” That remark got warm applause despite the 500-strong audience being 90% male. (Gentlemen indeed.)

Asked whether Canadian entrepreneurs should be more aggressive about raising capital, Croxon noted that, “In the digital area, it’s easier to bootstrap than a decade ago.” With falling computing and telecom costs, “You can get a lot more done with fewer dollars.”

Don’t wait. Get at it today. Live your dream

Wilson responded: “I always say that I would rather own 1% of Microsoft than 99% of a company that’s never going to get off the ground.” If you don’t like sharing equity with investors, “Too bad,” said Wilson: that’s how companies grow.

Treliving agreed, noting that overnight success stories in business get the headlines, but they’re rare as diamonds. “It takes a long time to build a company,” he said. At Boston Pizza, “it’s taken us 50 years.”

Croxon complained that Canadian entrepreneurs tend to sell their business too soon, before they reach their full potential. “Don’t get seduced by the quick dollars,” he warned. “Canadians can hold their own with any entrepreneurs in the world.”

Asked whether entrepreneurs are made or born, Wilson, who has an entrepreneurship centre named after him at the University of Saskatchewan, went on a rant about entrepreneurship education. “A professor once told me that you can’t teach entrepreneurship — you have to nurture it,” he said.

Treliving agreed, saying the way to create more entrepreneurs is to “Get people at an early age and show them what other entrepreneurs have done. We have to get our kids focused on what’s going on in the world.”

“I think entrepreneurs are made,” Croxon said. “But I think they are made in the first 10 years of their life. So it’s either in you or it’s not. The people who ‘made it’ later in life were always entrepreneurs.”

Asked for their best business advice, the dragons didn’t disappoint.

“Focus,” said Croxon. “I think by nature entrepreneurs are wildly optimistic. They tend to get excited by everything [i.e., every opportunity they see]. If you land on something, try to stay focused to get it off the ground. You can only make one thing work at a time.”

Wilson urged the audience to focus on his three mantras: entrepreneurship, marketing, and philanthropy. “Charity is good business,” he said. “There are so many things you can do to connect with your community; it’s a shame when I see businesses not doing it.”

Croxon agreed, noting that philanthropic thinking is more than good marketing; it can be a strategic advantage. “We’re in an age of ‘social,’ ” he said. “Our kids are growing up with a much greater knowledge of giving back than we ever had, and it’s creating a whole generation of new companies that are solving real problems.”

Treliving’s message was more succinct: “Don’t wait. Get at it today. Live your dream.”

For all the dragons’ celebrity, however, the best quote of the day went to Marcus Daniels, founder of Toronto-based accelerator Extreme Startups and the overshadowed fourth member of the panel. Younger and less glib than the dragons, he didn’t get many words in edgewise, but he knows how to hit them out of the park.

The panel had agreed that Canadian entrepreneurs tend to stick with it when their businesses underachieve, while U.S. entrepreneurs bail out sooner. But the dragons were split on whether that was a good thing. Daniels settled the matter by noting that too few Canadian entrepreneurs have experienced their Old Yeller moment: having to kill their ideas to move forward. In the old Disney movie, shooting his sick dog meant the boy had become a man. In business, moving on may be the hardest, biggest step on the long road to success.

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By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.